In unison, a Women’s Place as Victim and Aggressor
The striking cycle of violence that has claimed many women’s lives as they sit in a cell.
Many women across the world are deemed victim, meaning they have been harmed and become a casualty of a situation. Power dynamics in place leave women in the shadows and allow them to continuously be harmed, even by the ones who claim to love them.
Intimate Parter Violence, or IPV is when an individual in the relationship causes physical, psycological, or sexual harm to their partner. In most instances, the women tends to fall into the victim category and suffer the consequences. Since there are many examples of this occurring, one might question if there was ever a time a women fought back? The simple answer is — yes. But when women finally take control over their situation of being abused, the usual events that follow tend to throw her back into the cycle of violence that has placed her in that postion in the first place. After the violence has been committed we can also see how the law disadvantages women who have a different relationship to violence in all.
When women are in this postion, it places their male partner in a higher state of power, and leaves their perception of relationships skewed. And when they have finally had enough of the abuse, they fight back and take matters in their own hands. This can mean a physical altercation between the two or even taking the situation further and killing the abuser. So, when women themselves take on a violent role it means they take on a powerful role, but society does not reciprocate their struggle with words like victim or person harmed. Instead, they use words like aggressor and assailant, and in this we can see how the system wants and favors women as weaker instead of stronger.
“Roughly 90 percent of women behind bars for killing men, were physically abused by their victims.”
A woman named Tanya Mitchel, was sent to prison in 2002 for the murder of her abuser, and this story can highlight how the judicial system is still unforgiving to women who have faced a dark past. As for Tanya, that past included brutal beatings at the hands of her drug addicted husband. She was facing years of domestic abuse and felt as if she had no other choice, as for everytime she escaped she was found all over again by him. The issue with this is the underlying stigma that is in placed during the time of conviction for most women, usually resulting in harsher punishments for women in the nature of this crime, as opposed to men. Event though the judges knowledge of said women’s situation.
“Written by men for men, the law is designed to protect men from the power of the state and to adjudicate conflicts between men, to preserve order in a society of men”
lIn the excerpt,“Is Violence Male? The Law, Gender and Violence” by Lucinda Joy Peach, she discusses the various types of law practices in place that are used to perpetuate the patriarchy in the legal system. Mentioning how women who suffer from domestic abuse and in self defense end up killing their abuser, can be labeled as having Battered Women Syndrome or BWS. Through this she also is able to highlight how men are favored in the legal system and for women the law is used to disadvantage them. Women are often facing longer sentences and are unable to use the evidence of past abuse in favor for their self defense claim.
“Women who do exercise violence by, for example, causing serious bodily harm or death to their abusers, are frequently treated more harshly than men for similar offenses.”
Women in this postition also experience first hand the gender bias in the law, as mentioned before Peach explores this and also discusses the underlying issue of how differently women are treated for violent offenses. This gender bias also emphasizes how women are treated when they do not conform to gender expectations and act outside of what is “normal.” In the sense of violence, it is apparent that in society women are constructed to play the victim and not use violence. As for men it is widely accepted throughout their lives to use violence and not be reprimanded for it as a young girl would.
As a young child, my parent also enforced this gender binary of how I was able to use violence. My older brother was allowed to play sports, and wrestle with my cousins, as for me soccer was deemed “ too violent” for me to play. The gender bias in the conviction of women is a direct result of how girls and boy are taught differently in how to handle violence, the law does not typically play in favor of violent women, and do not seem to use prior knowledge of abuse to sympathize with them but to instead criminalize them and cause more harm to women in the end.
Overall, the bias towards women who use violence as a protection strategy needs to change, the legislature need understand instead of constantly trying to criminialize individuals that have been constantly beaten down by the system that does not work in their favor.
